Relocating to a new country can be a disorienting experience. Immigrants often find themselves in a strange new world where the rules have changed, the surroundings are unfamiliar, and the inhabitants speak in strange tongues. In some ways, the immigrant experience is like the dizzying journey taken by the lead character in Lewis Carroll's 19th-century novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
In this lesson, students will use class discussions of students' experiences, the first-hand accounts of immigrants, and other primary source documents and images from the collections of the Library of Congress to uncover the common themes of the immigrant experience.
Students will be able to:
- understand common themes of the immigrant experience, such as pushes and pulls, encountering differences, and assimilation;
- identify the common themes of the immigrant experience in a primary source oral history or narrative;
- draw conclusions about the themes of the immigrant experience by analyzing primary source photographs; and
- reinforce and extend understanding of the immigrant experience by creating a primary source photographic exhibit.
- Two weeks
Recommended Grade Level
- Immigration & Ethnic Heritage
- Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929
- Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900
Mary Johnson and Linda Thompson